This
by infamouslastwords
Summary: Ferris/Cameron, mentions of Ferris/Sloane and Ferris/OFC. 'So, you're getting married,' one of them said to you, and you left that place, too.


**This**

**by** infamous_last_**words**

There was only one thing that hadn't been hard about the whole ordeal, getting married. You had just picked up the pen and written Denver with boldness you'd forgotten about, dropping it in the blue box outside the post office. _Cam_, it had began. It had ended with an _F_.

You'd die if you talked about another salad dressing and baked chicken combination—this, though, seemed like the most natural thing in the world.

Standing out in the side lawn in boxers when the dew was still fresh this morning, the soft sun had almost annihilated you. Then, slowly, the guests had arrived; with each one, you stifled the life that was dwindling inside you. They smiled, so you did too, forgetting their names as quickly as you ushered them in for the food and drinks, your mother serving.

She came with her dress in the same car her brother, Andrew, did, kissing you quickly on the mouth before rushing upstairs with rosy cheeks and a handful of half-dressed bridesmaids. Andrew watched her go with his hands in his pockets, while your eyes wandered across the front lawn. After shaking his hand (he was your best man), you walked off to hide among the white-suited waiters unpacking, unwrapping, and plating the wedding dinners.

"So you're getting married," one of them said to you, and you left that place, too.

* * *

Sometime before eleven it started to rain, a low-lying mist hanging over the men with metal poles and patchwork tents trying desperately to work around gowned women in the backyard. You watched from your old room's window with Andrew sitting on your bed. He had come up beside you; ever since you'd been engaged, his presence was a shadow, looming. "Hope it lets up," you tried. He hadn't been looking at you, though, just standing with his hands in his pockets watching as the women below tried to evade the rain.

"When are you going to the airport," and now he looked, not moving his head. You turned your head to meet the gaze four inches higher than yours, and ended up staring at a throat.

"Later, his flight doesn't get in until later."

Andrew nodded after a minute, and then said, "I'll come with you."

"We'll see."

He helped you into your tux before being called away by your father. The other groomsmen lingered in the hall and stairwell until a little light came in from outside, and you waited patient for what the sky would look like as you drove—how the air would feel against your face, windows down. Suddenly it was very hard to stay in any room at all. By the time you made it down the stairs the rain had stopped.

* * *

On the way to the airport you stopped at a convenience store. The clerk stared; you asked for a pack of Marlboros from behind the counter as she rang you up. The last time you smoked had been graduation day; your fiancé had made you promise.

After the store you drove the line between suburbia and city to reach the airport. You remember the day in September you had driven Cam this same route, with this same car (parents caving at graduation despite Rooney's iron grip on your diploma). Sloane in the passenger's seat, Cam in the back between suitcases and suitcases looking like he was going to throw up. 'Not on the upholstery,' you'd said, but didn't know why. They had both had such grim faces on.

Walking to the terminal Sloane held your hand, Cameron ahead with the luggage cart. You watched his back as he swayed between the crowds, watched the space between his shoulders so intently that you swear you'd melt through the air and into his body.

With Sloane standing there when boarding was called, you hadn't been able to kiss him like you wanted to. You hadn't been able to do anything you wanted to.

* * *

His plane had already disembarked by the time you got to the terminal. He was sitting by the window with his over-the-shoulder carry on, staring boldly at those passing as if perturbed they might recognize him.

"Terry," you called as you approached, but he didn't look. "Terry," now, your eyes on his elsewhere ones. "Terry—" and he noticed you. You smiled, opening your arms like an old friend. "Ah, Terry!" He looked so confused, halting as he stood. "It's Jesse, don't you remember?"

"Ferris?" in a voice that let you know he hadn't changed. Or maybe it wasn't the time for jokes.

You backed down. "Yeah, hey Cam."

He walked into your embrace and it was a hug between past-parts of two fractured presents, no joy in the action. Cameron, alpine and unyielding. You felt suffocated in your tux walking to the car, so you took off the suit jacket as he climbed in to the passenger's seat. He grabbed the end of your sleeve so you could wriggle out of it.

"So, you showed."

You circumnavigated the drop-off lane, two hands on the wheel.

"Yeah, I guess I did."

He was not sure, you could tell, if he was okay with this or not.

"Well, thank you," taking it out of second as the street leveled out. "Really, Cameron."

He was watching the scenery pass from the corner of his eye. "It's not like I was given a choice, so…."

He had his hand on his left thigh and he was wearing a grey suit and what you wanted to do first was grab his fingers and squeeze them tight between your own. So you did. He went pale and silently shook the gesture off. You wondered when things got so bad.

"Cam."

"You always do this, Ferris. And no one's ever told you 'No,' so you never get what a spoiled little shit you can be, sometimes."

"Cam, it's my wedding."

He had been staring at you for a while, with that same fresh anger. Even after all these years, all the times he's given you that same look and done nothing to back it up, you're still scared shitless.

"Exactly why I shouldn't have come."

He went back to staring out the window, shoulders tense and knuckles white on his knee.

You reached into the back, fingers in the pocket of your suit jacket to grasp the carton. Pulling out a cigarette, "Calm down, Cam." And you realized you didn't have a light, the thing dangling uselessly from your lips. "You're making me nervous. Got a light?"

He was eyeing you from his peripherals. "I thought you quit."

You shrugged.

"She'll be able to smell it on you. At your wedding."

You checked your rearview. "Do I look like I care?" But he was already taking his lighter from his pocket and holding it out for you.

You breathed in, the first in three years. You breathed out, "Have one if you want."

The windows down and a couple streets from home he asked, "What's in the bag?" thumb jerking to the rear. The small convenience bag, yellow, flapped in the breeze; plastic, thin, cheap.

"Stuff."

He flicked his ashes above the window's edge. "Stuff."

"Yeah, you know. Things."

Taking a drag, "Things."

You threw your butt out the window. "I feel old. Am I old, Cam?"

He didn't answer, squinting his eyes in the sunlight of suburbia.

"This place is like a graveyard," he decided, stepping out of the car into your driveway. "So much past buried here."

He took his duffle bag in hand and followed you through the back door. A few other men were in your room getting ready, Andrew among them. He and Cameron shook hands and suddenly you felt like an outsider, door still covered by the Union Jack. Andrew's eyes flicked to yours and that split second let you die a little inside. Buried alive to crawl out and be buried again; this is what it was like to acknowledge a hidden truth. Fearful of the strength it would take (that you don't possess) to repeat this process of denial and forgetting.

Shaking, you showed Cam his tux in the next room over, draped it over your arms.

"Wow," he said, pulling off his own suit jacket with fervor before running a palm over the dry cleaner's plastic. "Wow, this is fantastically chintzy," with the first smile of his you'd seen in so long that your knees almost buckled because of the sudden dropping of your stomach. You swallowed, swallowed hard around a dry throat trying to digest the sudden weight of all your wanting.

He changed right in front of you, only you in the spare room at the end of the hall.

* * *

Family and friends milled around downstairs, every room populated. The stairs seemed like a pier as you walked down them into blonds and brunettes. Cameron had come down before you. You knew that somewhere above you, in one of those rooms, your fiancée was pacing and pulling at her dress, but you weren't thinking about that.

Cameron said something about being in the garden and Andrew was behind you his hand on your shoulder and there were your parents smiling oh god.

Twenty minutes later you were in the garage with the antifreeze smell and cold feet.

"Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck."

It was dark. The only light coming in was from shuttered windows, those crinkling metal blinds. Spider webs upon spider webs, the same garbage cans you used to drag out and in sitting by the lawn mower.

You kicked your father's car's front tire with Italian leather dress shoes.

A column of light appeared—a little girl standing in it.

"Is this the bathroom?" Duck voice.

"No, it's a garage."

"You look like that man on the cake. Are you the husband?"

"Not yet."

"Why are you standing in the dark?"

You watched her there, watching you and waiting for an answer. You hated kids, you had always hated kids. A wife would eventually want kids.

"The bathroom's down the hall and to the left, little girl."

"I'm not little."

Slowly she shut the door, and with dilated pupils you fall into the fear of not being able to see a thing.

* * *

Cameron was sitting next to you in the empty front room, the room your parents kept to show off furniture that was never sat on and bookcases full of gilded novels never read. Everyone had moved outside, beginning to take their seats for the ceremony. Noncommittal violins wafted through the air.

"You're only afraid because you feel the label will somehow demand more of you, more than what you already give."

You were almost catatonic, staring straight ahead.

"It won't. It doesn't mean you'll change, it doesn't mean all these new rules you think it will, Ferris."

Cameron knew you knew he was lying. They were lies. In high school you never asked girls out, you just kissed them and drove them places and let them assume. Because once you say girlfriend, so many doors shut. You lose your alibi, your excuse. You looked at Cameron suddenly. Staring at his clasped hands, sitting forward in his chair, elbows to knees. Once you say wife…

"I love you, Cameron," you blurted out, and it was true what Sloane had said to you at lunch a couple weeks ago; advertising had dried you up faster and better than Prozaq ever could.

He sat very still for a very long time. He cleared his throat, "Why," quietly. "Why didn't you think of the bathroom at the airport?"

He stared at you then, those eyes.

"You're creative, Ferris," mirthless. "Why didn't you think of a way to be with me?"

You opened your mouth but couldn't find words.

"To make me better?"

All those summers then the years after college until now, and all you've wanted to do since he'd arrived was fuck. You knew from the phone call to when he stood up at the airport, suit pants wrinkling around the bends in his long, slim legs. You'd known and he'd known and you both knew it would come to this, this scene. Cameron, full of all that misguided anger and you so scared of commitment yet unable to stay away. You two had promised, the last time, promised. Andrew listening through the door—you had had no clue. Slipping the engagement ring on to her finger the next night at dinner. You had had no clue your future would turn out this way.

Your room was empty, everyone was outside. Your wife-to-be was pacing and pulling at her dress behind some rose bushes on the side lawn. You and Cameron collided with all the fear and anger and past, the empty yellow convenience store bag blown around by May air from the open window.

* * *

Sitting there below the open window, staring at Cameron's chest sweaty and stirring after cumming hard inside you, you took a drag of the fifth cigarette from the carton. Something in Cameron's eyes caught the three o'clock sun as they slid over to yours, and suddenly you weren't so afraid.

Marriage was something Ferris Bueller could be creative with. But this. There was nothing more real or inescapable than this.


End file.
